A First Time for Everything

Because Dan’s memoir is a graphic novel, its illustrations are central to telling the story, conveying themes, and revealing character development. Dan’s illustration style is emotive, both in how he draws characters’ faces with such detailed expressions and in the shading techniques and color choices he uses. He sticks to the warm side of the color spectrum, except when the scene takes place at night or is a flashback. When Dan is embarrassed about eating all the breadsticks, he emphasizes this through the red on his cheeks and how his mouth curls into a squiggly half grin, showing his embarrassment with only a couple of subtle changes in his appearance. Dan doesn’t rely heavily on comic-style techniques like emanata (symbols or motion lines emanating from characters’ heads or objects for emphasis), reserving these techniques for notable events, like when Amy rides a toboggan in Lucerne. Dan’s style is also less cartoony and leans more toward realism, as is appropriate for a memoir. Since the panels are almost always image dominant, Dan’s illustrations take precedence as the foremost form of communication in his memoir. He has always had a passion for drawing, but it was because of Amy that he finally felt confident enough to share his drawings with the world.